Sooner Or Later
by bowtruckles
Summary: Summoned to St. Mungo's in the middle of the night, Ron and Hermione find themselves making some very big life decisions. Written for the 2019 Romione Fluff Fest on Tumblr.


A/N: This was written for the 2019 Romione Fluff Fest on Tumblr for the prompt "Hospital room at 2:38 am". Hope you enjoy!

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Ron's fast asleep, face smashed into his pillow, when a glowing silver stag gallops into the master bedroom at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place and the sound of his best friend's voice erupts through the quiet bedroom. Hermione has to jostle him awake to relay the message: that he's about to become an uncle once again. It takes a fair amount of coaxing and cajoling to motivate him to actually put on his trousers - he's never been a morning person, and even less so a middle-of-the-night person - but soon enough, they're whirling through the Floo on the way to St. Mungo's. They've gotten used to this routine, twice with Bill and then once with Percy, but this is the first time that they've traversed these halls at half past one in the morning, theirs the only footsteps echoing off the walls.

They find their way to the nearest waiting room, sink into horridly uncomfortable chairs, and wait. Ron fixes them each a cup of tea - Hermione's with just a touch of milk, his inundated with sugar - and she watches him as they sip their beverages. His hair is all in disarray, as is hers, his eyes are still bleary with lingering sleep, and there's a smear of soot on the side of his nose from the Floo that she wipes away with a gentle finger.

"Where's everyone else?" Ron asks into the quiet. Typically, the rest of the Weasley family is not difficult to spot.

"I'm sure they'll be along soon," Hermione says, leaning her head on his shoulder. She's not about to admit it, but they might have been a bit overeager, rushing to the hospital the way they had - but then again, it isn't like this happens every day. She closes her eyes and breathes in the familiar smell of Ron's hair as they fall into a comfortable silence again.

The first person they see, a solid hour later, is Harry, who emerges from a nearby room with his black hair wilder than Hermione has ever seen it, his green eyes rimmed with red. He opens his mouth to speak before simply shrugging and beckoning to them to follow him. They do, entering cautiously to see Ginny, pale and exhausted, propped up in bed with a tiny bundle in her arms. A broad smile bursts over Harry's face as he introduces his son - called James Sirius, naturally - and deftly plucks the infant from his wife's arms.

"Where's Mum and Dad?" asks Ron, watching as Harry adjusts the blanket around the newborn.

"They'll be here in the morning, but we figured you two should be the first to meet him," Harry replies as Ginny lets out an enormous yawn, "since you're his godparents and all."

"We _are_?"

"Of course," says Ginny casually. "Who else would it be?"

"You'd really trust me to look after your kid?" Ron jokes, even though Hermione detects a flush rising up his neck and into his cheeks.

Harry shrugs. "We're not planning on dying anytime soon."

"Not that you're very good at dying, anyway," Ron quips, earning a pinch on the leg from Hermione and an eye-roll from Harry for his remark. "Erm, can I hold him?"

Hermione watches, pleasantly surprised, as Harry very cautiously passes James off to Ron. In the past, Ron has always been wary of holding newborns, terrified of somehow hurting them. He usually leans more toward playing the role of fun uncle, sneaking sweets to his nieces and taking them on low-altitude broomstick rides, but now he accepts the minutes-old child into his arms as though he's been doing this his whole life.

"Harry, he looks just like you," Hermione comments, peering over Ron's shoulder at the shock of black hair on the baby's head.

"Yeah," Harry agrees. "He's got her eyes though," he adds with a jerk of his head toward Ginny.

Ron gives a long-suffering sigh. "Are you telling me that this kid looks like his dad but he has his mother's eyes?"

Harry half-laughs, half-groans and shakes his head. "Ron, it's like, two-thirty in the morning, I don't have the patience for you right now, we just had a baby-"

"No, no," Ginny pipes up from the bed. "_I_ just had a baby. You just provided moral support - and can you go get me some more of those ice chips?"

Looking sheepish, Harry nods and exits the room, and Ron shifts in his seat, adjusting James in his arms so that he's supporting the baby's head with one hand and his little body with the other.

"Can I tell you something?" Ron says to Hermione in a low voice as Ginny begins perusing the assortment of healing potions on her bedside table. Hermione nods. "I want one."

Hermione freezes. "Want one? Want one _what_?"

"I want a baby," Ron adds, actively fighting back a smile. "I think we should have one. What d'you say?"

It's a problem, this proposition, mainly because Ron, all messy hair and bright blue eyes with a newborn in his arms, is giving her all sorts of thoughts that she didn't think she'd yet be having at twenty-four. They're young, they're happy, and they've got all the time in the world to embark upon these sorts of endeavors. And yet...

"You're just sleep-deprived," Hermione reasons, as much to herself as to him.

"I'm not - all right, I mean, I am, but that's not why I'm saying this."

"I don't know if this is a conversation we want to have in front of Ginny-"

"Oh, you lot do what you want," Ginny chimes in with an errant wave of her hand. "I'm all hopped up on pain potion, I don't know how much of this I'll even remember tomorrow."

Ron chuckles, biting his lip in the sort of way that makes Hermione want to bring him home and perhaps at least _practice_ conceiving a child before she reminds herself that she's being irrational.

"We aren't even married yet," Hermione reminds him in what she feels is a robust display of common sense.

"Well - we could do that too," says Ron, his voice softer now.

His bottom lip still between his teeth - and he has to stop doing that, Hermione decides at once, because he's making her think all sorts of frankly outlandish things - he bounces James, who has started to fuss just a bit, gently up and down to soothe him.

Of course. Of course Ron chooses this moment, of all moments, to inadvertently show her just how particularly good he is with children.

But this, she already knows, because he's surrounded by kids of all ages every single day at the joke shop and somehow he never loses his patience with them, and he's always the one on the floor with the other little Weasleys at holidays, letting them break the rules while playing Gobstones and teaching them secret handshakes. With a start, Hermione comes to understand that he's probably been thinking about this for years.

"So - what are you asking me, exactly?" Hermione attempts to clarify. "To get married or to have a baby? Or both?"

Ron glances back at Ginny, who's accepting a cup of ice chips from Harry. "All I'm saying," he says with more gravity in his voice, "is that I want this with you. I mean, I always have, and you know that, but now I actually don't think the future's so far off anymore."

More than anything, Hermione's stunned at her own non-reaction to this. She should be flabbergasted, telling him he's gone mad, telling him that this is the sort of decision that requires a serious sit-down conversation and perhaps a distinct absence of Harry and Ginny, but none of that is going through her mind. All she knows is that it's two thirty-eight in the morning and she's not sure if she's in the process of getting engaged or deciding to get pregnant but whatever it is, it's the two of them doing what they always do: taking some crazy leap, together, and figuring it out along the way.

"What's going on with these two?" Harry asks Ginny, his voice low from across the room.

"They might've just gotten engaged," Ginny tells him. "Or they might be having a baby. I'm a little fuzzy on the details… and so are they, I think."

Harry, to Hermione's chagrin, doesn't even look fazed by this, and merely shakes his head and drops into a chair at Ginny's bedside.

"Here, I'll hold him now," says Hermione, extending her arms to take James from Ron.

The baby really does look just like Harry, and yet it's not so difficult for Hermione to envision a head of wispy red hairs rather than black, and blue eyes instead of hazel. It's all too easy to imagine Ron cradling their own child the way he was just holding James. Suddenly it's all right before her eyes in vivid technicolor, when before it was a hazy, far-off future that never really seemed like it would come.

She turns to look at Ron, and her heart skips a beat. He's looking at her, but not expectantly, like he's waiting for her to respond to all the proposals he's made in the last few minutes. He's just looking at her in - well, the way he's always looked at her, like she is the only thing that matters in the world.

"Let's talk about this at home," says Hermione softly. "Without an audience."

"Yeah," says Ron with a nod, a gentle smile on his lips. "Course."

When James fusses a little more, his pink face screwing up in disquiet, Hermione passes him back to Ginny. A hush falls in the little room, then, interrupted only by the occasional whimpering of the baby and the steadily ticking clock on the wall.

"Go home, you lot," says Harry, his bloodshot eyes focusing on Ron and Hermione. "Really, it means a lot that you're here and that you came to see him, but you should get some sleep. Someone ought to," he adds with a little chuckle, "and it's not going to be us."

There are more congratulatory hugs and handshakes, and soon Hermione and Ron are back in the deafening quiet of the hallway. And yet it's a contented silence, not a tense one, and not a word is spoken between them until after they've returned to the warmth of their bed.

"You might be crazy, you know," Hermione says, turning her head on her pillow to face him.

"Oh, I know I am."

"But everything you said before… you really meant it, didn't you?"

"Of course I did. You don't think I'd start talking to you about marriage and babies without actually meaning it-"

"I mean the part about you wanting to do all of that right now."

To her surprise, he sits up, knees tenting the duvet, and rakes his fingers through his hair. "I'm messing this up," he moans with a small shake of the. "I always thought that when I asked you to marry me, it'd be, I dunno, at least a little bit romantic. I didn't think it'd be at the hospital - I definitely didn't think Harry and Ginny would be there-"

"Well, but-" Hermione sits too, her hands automatically seeking out his in the dark. "Are you really asking me, then?"

"I want to marry you," he tells her. "And I want kids with you. But it's all right if you're not ready yet."

"I used to think you could be ready for anything, if you tried hard enough," says Hermione thoughtfully. "If you practiced enough, or read enough books, you'd know everything, you'd be prepared for anything that could come along, but I've learned that's not true."

Ron tilts his head, nodding in concurrence. "This isn't the kind of thing you can be completely ready for, I don't think."

"But you and I do make quite a good team."

"Yeah, we do okay." He gives her a little smile, squeezing her hand.

"So if you're asking… I'm saying yes. To all of it."

His face lights up, his smile shining in the silvery glow of the moon. He looks like he's about to speak, but then leans in and simply kisses her, warm and sweet. Against her lips, he mumbles that he loves her, and soon she's climbing into his lap, a hand on either side of his face. A thrill of giddiness rushes through her at the turn the night has taken. The unknown path ahead of them should be intimidating; this next step they're taking may be the biggest of their lives… yet Hermione embraces it. The time to worry may come later, but for now, she has Ron at her side, and that's enough.

"I know what you said…" His voice is almost husky as he lays kisses along her jaw and down the side of her neck. "But a little, er, practice couldn't hurt, could it?"

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_Thanks for reading! Please review :)_


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